Hans Muench, the last surviving doctor from the Auschwitz concentration camp, has been declared unfit to stand trial for murder.

Public prosecutors in the German state of Hesse have
dropped their investigation against Dr Muench, 88, after medical
examiners found he was suffering from Alzheimer's disease.

I could conduct experiments on humans that otherwise are
only possible on rabbits

Hans Muench

Prosecutors had not yet turned up sufficient evidence to
justify action against Dr Muench, said Job Tilmann, chief spokesman in the Frankfurt
prosecutor's office.

However, he said the investigation has been called off because Dr
Muench's poor health makes a trial impossible in any case.

Experiments

Dr Muench, who now lives in Bavaria, is the former director of the Institute of Hygiene
for the Waffen SS.

He was an accomplice of the notorious Nazi doctor Josef
Mengele.

He conducted medical experiments on Auschwitz inmates
between 1943 and 1945 and has been repeatedly cited in media
interviews as being unrepentant about his past.

He was tried for war crimes at a trial in Poland
in 1947 for his malaria and rheumatism experiments in which Jews were
infected on purpose to study if they were immune.

He was
acquitted after former inmates he had worked with in the
Auschwitz laboratory testified he had helped save their lives.

Gassed

But a fresh murder investigation was launched against him
in 1998 after he boasted in an interview of killing
Auschwitz internees.

Dr Muench recalled how he had ordered whole barracks of inmates to be gassed if one person contracted a contagious disease and said he had no regrets about conducting grotesque experiments on the camp's Jewish internees.

"I could conduct experiments on humans that otherwise are
only possible on rabbits," he said.

He further praised Dr Mengele, whose own experiments led to
countless deaths, as highly intelligent and cultured.

Dr Mengele, who was never tried, escaped to Argentina after the war and drowned in 1979.

A Paris court also wants to try Dr Muench in absentia for
approving the murder of gypsies after he said in a French radio
interview that gassing them "was the only way to handle them".